The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for comparing financial information of a business entity with that of others. A financial manager of a business entity may be able to learn about the general business spending of the entity, but may find it difficult to determine whether the entity is over-spending relative to other entities. Thus, it is desirable to be able to compare the spending transactions of a business entity with those of similar entities by category, by time period, and by other attributes such as payee.
One approach to allow a business entity to compare their spending transactions with those of others is to provide it with average business spending data gathered by market researchers. This approach is inadequate because many factors affect business spending, such as location of the business, type of business, demographic or geographic segments of the target customers, to name only a few. Comparing the spending of a business with average business spending makes little sense in helping the business to spot over-spending. This approach is also inadequate because businesses cannot compare their spending by category with average business spending, as the average business spending data do not provide categorized spending data. Also, market researchers tend to value such business spending information highly, and small businesses usually do not have financial resources to pay for such data.
Another approach is to provide business entities with access to a central database storing spending transactions of many business entities. This raises concerns over privacy and proprietary information. Because the spending transactions stored do not include category information, businesses cannot compare their spending by attributes such as category. Also, unless a business can limit the comparison to similar businesses, the results may not be helpful.